Page 32 of Subduing the Shark

Jack pressed his face against the concrete and closed his eyes and breathed. Every inhale hurt. The cuts on his arms were still bleeding, slow, the kind of bleed that would stop on its own if he didn't move. He didn't move. He lay on the concrete and bled and listened to the quiet of the pool room and tried to find the blankness, the going-away place, the nothing spot.

It wasn't there. Just Jack, on the ground, with blood on his hands and a body in the water and the knowledge that the person he'd been twenty minutes ago, the one who went still when the fight was lost, was gone. Replaced by someone who could kill. Who had killed. Who'd discovered that the opposite of compliance wasn't freedom. It was violence, and the violence felt as bad as the blankness, and Jack didn't know what was left if both of those things were taken away.

He heard the door. The inner door, the one to the pool hallway. The click of claws on tile. Fast, skittering, four legs moving at a pace that was frantic, focused, and nothing like a dolphin.

A wet nose pressed against Jack's cheek.

He opened his eyes. A bloodhound stood over him, long ears dragging on the wet concrete, brown eyes wide and frantic,panting from a run that must have covered miles. The nose pressed against his face again, sniffing, checking, cataloging the damage with the same obsessive thoroughness that Harold brought to everything.

Then the hound shifted and there was Harold, naked and kneeling on the concrete beside him, and Harold's hands were on his face.

"Jack. I'm here."

Jack looked up at him. The lights were bright. Harold's face was blurred. Everything hurt.

"He came to the pool," Jack whispered. "He found me."

Harold's forehead pressed against his temple. Warm skin, warm breath, the smell of earth and rain cutting through the blood. Jack closed his eyes and let Harold hold him there on the wet concrete with the body of the man he'd killed floating in the water behind them.

The last thing he felt before the dark took him was Harold's hand on his jaw, steady and warm, not letting go.

Chapter Eighteen

The smell of lions engulfed Jack like a smothering blanket. He had no idea where he was. His body informed him of its condition in layers. The rib first, a deep structural pain that wrapped around his left side and tightened every time he inhaled. Then the cuts, dozens of them, pulling where they'd been cleaned and bandaged. His arms were wrapped in gauze from wrist to elbow. His chest was taped. His jaw ached, and when he moved it pain shot up into his temple.

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was unfamiliar. Not the shiver house, not the pool, not a hospital. Low lighting, warm tones, the smell of coffee and amber musk. He was lying on a couch in a room he'd never been in before, and someone was holding his hand.

Jack turned his head and Amani was sitting in a chair beside the couch.

The lion was in his hoodie, zipped up, sleeves pulled long. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and Jack's hand held between both of his, and he was looking at Jack's face with an expression that Jack had never seen directed at him from anyone. Not pity. Not anger. Not the careful neutrality of the bar shifts or the distant fury of the thrown glasses. Amani was looking at him the way most people look at someone who is hurt and who matters to them, and the fact that Jack couldn't make that fit inside his understanding of what he deserved nearly sent him back under.

"You're in my mother's apartment," Amani said slowly, carefully so that Jack caught every word. "Harold carried you up the stairs. You've been out for about three hours."

Jack tried to sit up. The rib stopped him. He sank back against the cushion and breathed through his teeth and Amani's hands tightened on his.

"Don't move," Amani said. "Miriam looked at you already. She said the rib's cracked again where it was healing, not displaced, and the cuts are shallow except for the one on your side, which needed stitches. You're not going to die." He paused. "You look terrible."

"Thanks." Jack's voice was a scrape. His throat felt like he'd swallowed sand. "How long have you been sitting here?"

"Since Harold brought you in." Amani didn't let go of his hand. His grip was firm and warm. His fingers were calloused from years of gripping bottles, shakers, and the edge of a bartop he used as an anchor when the world moved too fast. "He called Nero from the pool. Nero called my mother. My mother called Miriam. I came here on my own."

The last sentence carried weight. Amani had chosen to be there. Nobody had sent him, nobody had asked him, nobody had relayed the instruction through Nero. Amani had heard that the shark who'd helped kidnap him was bleeding on his mother's couch. He'd walked in, sat in a chair, and taken Jack's hand.

"Rashe?" Jack asked. He knew what he'd done, but he needed to hear it.

Amani's grip shifted. His thumb moved against Jack's knuckles, a slow back-and-forth that might have been conscious or might have been the same soothing motion he used when his own hands needed something to do. "He's dead, Jack. You killed him."

Jack closed his eyes. He'd known it. He'd known it on the concrete at the pool, known it in the dark between there and here, known it in whatever unconscious space his body had been resting in for three hours. But hearing it said out loud in Amani'squiet voice, in a room that smelled like Lady Leo's coffee, made it real in a way that knowing hadn't.

"I didn't mean to," Jack said quickly, his voice full of pain. "I didn't plan it. He came to the pool. He shifted. He was trying to kill me and I just..." He stopped. The words weren't accurate. He hadn't just anything. He'd fought back, genuinely fought back, and the fighting had turned into something he couldn't control and the thing he couldn't control had killed someone. "The frenzy. I've heard of it but I've never... It took over. I wasn't in my own head."

"I know," Amani said. "Harold told us."

The door to the room opened. Harold came in carrying a glass of water and stopped when he saw Jack's eyes open. He was dressed in borrowed clothes, a t-shirt that was too small across the shoulders and sweatpants that were too short in the leg, and he looked like he'd been awake for a week. His gaze found Jack, and something in his face broke open, only to reassemble itself in the space of a second.

He crossed the room and crouched beside the couch, next to Amani. He put the glass on the floor. His hand went to Jack's face, thumb against his cheekbone, and the touch was so careful it barely registered as pressure.

"Hey," Harold said. His voice was rough.